"First Letter to David" and "On Wanting to Be Loved"

She looked better and better to herself in his bathroom mirror as she washed up and got all ready to spend the night with him in his warm bed. 

I put a stone at each corner of the paper to hold it still beneath the fan in our bedroom. The instructions were simple.

A furniture delivery arrives, as my mother warned me upon leaving for the store that it might, and two nieces who have hidden themselves in a cabinet come out at the sound of the doorbell to ogle the brightly-colored truck in the driveway.

All the Meg Johnsons
would like to kill me

Sitting still can be tough on a body, just as the shifting earth, and plunging and thawing temperatures can be hard on a pipe.

Jeanette has gotten many notes in bars before. Many men have spoken to her too. 

The world does not write enough odes
to in-betweenness—the way you can be
together / feel apart / apart / feel together.
In a room of dozens, in a city of millions,
the mashing of MacBook keys

My sister called me the morning after that dream to tell me that the family cat was dying. It was the last cat that was still alive from the time I had lived with my parents.

Previously on... Episode 1: "The Landing"

Yoda had nothing with him other than the clothes on his back and the debris inside of the pod. There was no need for anything else. He had left his

I’m in conversation with Helen Dudley about “Reed-Song” 
her poem published in Poetry, 1915.

All day Iphigenia 
so far from the man I came to see.
Haven’t we tired of famous men? Shouldn’t I 
have my shoulders back, chin straight—I was given graces
that distract from the tissues in my

I didn’t realize, when we were falling in love, that her father was a pathological extrovert.

17.
 

He who left home built the biggest steel bridge over the long river

The bridge was a success for millions of people
But he who built it died on it

His mother back in the village

You are dancing naked and you think you’re alone, but someone is watching. It’s Red, your daughter.

Here Rests An Alien At Her Foreign Home. 

The internet is shit.
The time is wrong. 
No one lets me eat
what I want. Here 
is a roach trying to swim 
upside down. Here 
is a garden full of

People are still here! Said the dog’s eyes.

There is a ceramic pot full of my mother’s cigarette butts on the front steps of my childhood home, hot-glued back together by my father after one of our cats saw a chipmunk, and went for it.

Rhapsody
 

I opened the window so I could hear people.
But all I heard was the wind rushing,
fine garment of nothingness, like tulle.
You sent me a handout listing various
cognitive

The first time I went to the opera I went because I wanted to see a man go to hell. My dad got us tickets to Don Giovanni and at the end Don Giovanni refuses to apologize for the terrible things he’s

it's dead at the bar so I say
"sure but I'm not in college
and I'm not wearing underwear

Dream that you are asleep 
beneath a mosquito net 
next to your mother
who is always singing. 
Forget that you are sixty. 
Time flies when you’re 
surviving with meals to eat, 
people to talk

A dog would live too long. An axolotl would stink the house. Reptile equipment is confusing, complex. I’m allergic to cats. What I really wanted was a sibling, or my father. I was thirteen. We bought

Pan and the Nanny Goat

                         After ancient Pompeii marble sculpture
 

The God of the Wild yanks his lover's chin hair, 
clasps her knee, his godhood fully aroused.

“You should just ask yourself what your needs are,” Stephanie says. She raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of sangria, swallows loudly. “Once you know, then you’ll meet the right guy.”

I glare